Thailand: Southern Islands - January 2007
Dear English-speaking readers, this page is an automatic translation made from a post originally written in French. My apologies for any strange sentences and funny mistakes that may have been generated during the process. If you are reading French, click on the French flag below to access the original and correct text:
Français You saw the movie The beach with Leonardo Di Caprio and Virginie Ledoyen? Yes, it's there... Maya Bay, on Koh Phi Phi Leh, in the south of Thailand.
Maya Bay, the beach neither deserted nor secret
Well, needless to say that once arrived on the island, it is not at all like in the movie: the beach of Maya Bay is very easily accessible, and not at all deserted, especially in this month of January, it is the high tourist season!
Update 2011 : I went back to Koh Phi Phi four years later, in 2011 and unfortunately nothing has changed in Maya Bay. The place is certainly still beautiful, but in terms of tourist numbers, it is perhaps even worse than in 2007... See my new pictures in this post → Phi Phi Leh, the beautiful island
Update 2022: Maya Bay, suffocated by overtourism, was closed in 2018 by the Thai authoritiesThe explosion of tourism from China, in particular, which now represents nearly a third of visitors to Thailand, has not helped matters. Thailand was planning to reopen Maya Bay in 2021, it will finally be the 1er January 2022by limiting the number of people. To protect ecosystems, quotas are effective, we saw it in Sipadan in Malaysia. So, it's a good initiative. By the way, two to three months after the closure of Maya Bay, the sharks came back: "We went from 5,000 tourists to about 60 sharks." sums up a Thai marine biologist, specialist of the issue, interviewed in a report for Correspondent on France 2. The association Ocean Quest began replanting coral "cuttings" in the area by fixing them to the glue, with success.
But well... I have to admit it, the white sand and the turquoise waters (if you frame well to avoid having too many people on the picture) always make their little effect !!!
Yesterday, we spent the day on a boat, to go around the beaches and nearby islands. At each stop, we splashed in the water with mask and snorkel or went for a kayak ride!
Pure tourist idleness, under a bright sun. Too hard, life under the Thai coconut trees! 😎
Diving in Hin Daeng and Hin Muang
Today, diving again, but this time on the famous sites of Hin Daeng and Hin Muangat one and a half hours speedboat from Koh Phi Phi.
We hoped to see manta rays, which are visible in the area in this season, but no chance. They did not deign to cross our road under water... Too bad! The underwater fauna remains abundant and spectacular.
A big fat moray stoically supported the light of my flash for a tight portrait. The moray eels are very nice critters, finally, despite their patibular appearance ...
😉
